“If you’re using Apple’s Mail application on the Mac you’ve probably seen the app slow down over time,” Mike Matthews writes for The App Factor. “One reason why this can happen is because the database used by Mail to store messages can grow to a large size thanks to message fragmenting and gaps in the database when messages are deleted.”

“Lucky for you there’s a fairly simple solution, made even simpler by using Automator, Apple’s easy-to-use app for automating tasks that often need to be performed repeatedly,” Matthews writes. “And isn’t that at least part of the reason why people invented computers to begin with – to handle the mundane tasks that repeatedly pop up in our lives?”

Matthews writes, “Our goal is this: Make Mail faster by cleaning up the mail database.”